In Moving into the Unknown, using Buddha's teachings as a starting point, Osho looks at the idea of discipline, taking the reader far beyond the conventional use of the worditself. He describes the use of awareness to reveal the natural discipline that comes from listening to oneself. He also talks about living dangerously and courageously, taking up the challenge of the inner search when you still have the energy to do it. Now is the time, he says, and urges one not to wait. Full of anecdotes and stories and his irrepressible humour, this inspiring book elucidates Osho's own experience of enlightenment.
Rajneesh (born Chandra Mohan Jain, 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990) and latter rebranded as Osho was leader of the Rajneesh movement. During his lifetime he was viewed as a controversial new religious movement leader and mystic.
In the 1960s he traveled throughout India as a public speaker and was a vocal critic of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and Hindu religious orthodoxy.
Rajneesh emphasized the importance of meditation, mindfulness, love, celebration, courage, creativity and humor—qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition and socialization.
In advocating a more open attitude to human sexuality he caused controversy in India during the late 1960s and became known as "the sex guru".
In 1970, Rajneesh spent time in Mumbai initiating followers known as "neo-sannyasins". During this period he expanded his spiritual teachings and commented extensively in discourses on the writings of religious traditions, mystics, and philosophers from around the world. In 1974 Rajneesh relocated to Pune, where an ashram was established and a variety of therapies, incorporating methods first developed by the Human Potential Movement, were offered to a growing Western following. By the late 1970s, the tension between the ruling Janata Party government of Morarji Desai and the movement led to a curbing of the ashram's development and a back taxes claim estimated at $5 million.
In 1981, the Rajneesh movement's efforts refocused on activities in the United States and Rajneesh relocated to a facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon. Almost immediately the movement ran into conflict with county residents and the state government, and a succession of legal battles concerning the ashram's construction and continued development curtailed its success.
In 1985, in the wake of a series of serious crimes by his followers, including a mass food poisoning attack with Salmonella bacteria and an aborted assassination plot to murder U.S. Attorney Charles H. Turner, Rajneesh alleged that his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and her close supporters had been responsible. He was later deported from the United States in accordance with an Alford plea bargain.[
After his deportation, 21 countries denied him entry. He ultimately returned to India and a revived Pune ashram, where he died in 1990. Rajneesh's ashram, now known as OSHO International Meditation Resort and all associated intellectual property, is managed by the Zurich registered Osho International Foundation (formerly Rajneesh International Foundation). Rajneesh's teachings have had a notable impact on Western New Age thought, and their popularity has increased markedly since his death.
My fav quotes (not a review): "The bad man's ego is based on his mischief. The good man's ego is based on his virtue. But both have egos." "To love a woman is natural, to love a man is natural. To reproduce children is natural, nothing wrong in it. But to think about women, to carry pornographic pictures, to fall asleep every night thinking about women -- women and women and women -- that is sexuality."
Sannyas has two steps: First is from the known into the unknown, and the second is from the unknown into the unknowable. It is natural to feel afraid and there is no contradiction that you are also feeling happiness arise; that too is as natural as fear. The person who lives without any adventure lives without fear but also without happiness. He lives a convenient life, comfortable, cozy, but dull, stupid, meaningless, with no joy, no song, no dance; nothing ever happens into his being, he simply vegetates. From birth to death he simply goes on dying every day, each moment, slowly. Of course his death is so slow that he cannot feel it. It is a kind of slow suicide. And sannyas is for the gamblers; it is not for the businesslike, it is not for the calculators, it is not for the computers. It is for men, real men, authentic men who are always ready to listen to the challenge of the unknown, who are ready to go into the uncharted sea. There is no guarantee of the other shore; there cannot be any guarantee in sannyas.